CLIMATE SERVICES: THEIR POTENTIALS IN IMPROVING ECONOMIC PERFORMANCES IN AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS.

Abstract

Adaptation to Climate Change represents nowadays one of the main problem contemporary society has to face with, especially because of the high complexity involved in socio-ecological systems.The difficulty to manage climate variability is particularly relevant in the agricultural sector, in which key challenges are related to the behaviour of economic agents and their relationships, within the broader context of climate change adaptation. To understand how these interactions take place, represents one open and stimulating issue for decision-makers and socio-economic research.Generally we can distinguish between two different types of adaptation. Planned adaptation refers to a policy context and decisions take the form of identifying the “best option” within sets of different plausible adaptation measures. Autonomous adaptation instead concerns economic agents’ behaviour, exploring their decision processes and preferences and analyse effects at multiple scales. In such a context, to analyse and well understand interactions among different agents in contest-specific situations become fundamental, building mental models able to extricate systems' intrinsic complexity.Which is the potential role that could be played by climate services? In particular, to what extent and by which tools can improved climate information be efficiently managed and utilised to contribute to water saving?Agent-Based Modelling constitutes one of the more suitable methods in approaching those problems, being able to capture the intrinsic complexity of socio-ecosystems and, in this manner, bringing decision-makers into the right way to operate across these systems.This thesis aims to explore the potentials of climate services in adaptation to climate change, referring in particular to a case study application of ABM in agriculture field.